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On the Eve of a Disturbing New Year
[Translator’s note:
Following the Nandigram carnage of 14 March 2007 the governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi came out in an unprecedented gesture of condemnation by issuing a grim statement: “the news has filled me with a sense of cold horrorâ€. He asked in anguish: “What is the public purpose served by the use of force that we have witnessed today!â€(The Telegraph, Kolkata. 15/03/07). The Governor immediately rushed to Tamluk the following day, visited the injured in the hospital; it was the first and till date only healing touch from government. He said during this visit: “whatever has happened is not good for anyone.â€(The Statesman 16/03/07)
Professor Sunanda Sanyal shows how this brutality but indicates a long process of more and more thorough criminalization on the one hand and cumulative psychic castration of the elite by means of terror and baits. While reading his essay which is actually an anguished cry, one is reminded of Coetzee: J.M.Coetzee envisions in ‘Last Things’ (Inner Workings: Literary Essays) as “a vision of life without consolation or dignity or promise of grace, in the face of which our only duty – inexplicable and futile of attainment, but a duty nonetheless—is not to lie to ourselvesâ€.]
I cannot recall a sadder New Years’ eve. The cause of this sadness is not Singur or Nandigram; nor is it the recent carnage and mass rape. This sadness overpowers me as I think of a particular trend of the society today. This mass murder and rape, organized and perpetrated as it has been by the government, but serve as an unmistakable indicator of that trend. It is the trend towards selfishness and cruelty, in brief towards dehumanization.
The CPIM has made this dehumanization the driving force of Bengal today. It has turned the elite into compliant party-servers by holding tempting carrots before their nose. Once one has swallowed the bait s/he can be made to do anything. In case one fails to oblige, the threat of making a ‘hell’ of your life, the shower of obscene abuses follow as a matter of course. If that fails to secure obedience murder is a mere sleight of hands. It may be the case of one or two corpses, as it had been in Singur. But if that fails to clamp the desired degree of panic, a whole village community can be butchered , as it happened in Nandigram.
Remember Rajkumar Bhul! The young man of Singur died of police beating. His offence was joining the democratic movement for saving agricultural land. We did not launch any movement demanding investigation into Rajkumar’s death. The government got the message that if its police thrashed these protesters to death the people of Bengal would eventually accept it. Therefore, Tapasi Malik was gangraped and burnt alive. We made some mild murmur of polite sympathy, but eventually accepted Tapasi’s death too—just the way we had accepted CPIM’s treachery with the East Bengali refugees in Marichjhanpi, its murder of monks and nuns on the Bijan Setu by sizzling them alive; just as we dismissed the grotesque cruelty of the Bantala killing by reverentially citing Jyotibabu’s callous trivialization: ‘amon to katoi hay’ (Such things can always happen!). Countless events like this have taken place before our own eyes. For the last thirty years the CPIM has successfully turned the Bengali community into a pack of hypocrites and cowards. So, this party of cannibals had taken it for granted that even if it devoured all the residents of Sonachura, the imbecile Bengali won’t raise a finger.
Therefore, serving such notices as ‘dekhe nebo’ (we’ll teach you a lesson), ‘life hell kore debo’ (we’ll make hell of your life), the CPIM leaders had declared war against the common people of Nandigram. Just envision what was going on in Sonachura that morning of 14 March. Countless dead and half-dead children being torn asunder by pulling the two legs apart; their heads chopped off and thrown into sacks; dead and half-dead bodies dumped into mass graves; corpses smuggled off in trekkers and launches, and thereafter slashed at the belly before being thrown into water, so that they do not float up later!
And rape! Medha Patkar met a woman whose uterus had been burst by rods pushed through the vagina. Another woman told me she was first gangraped on the open road and even after that they continued tearing her undergarments, while digging teeth into her cheeks as if set to bite off chunks of flesh.
It took three hours at most for all this-- to unleash ‘hell’ in so many ways into the lives of those who were unwilling to part with their bits of land in Nandigram. It is impossible to organize such a range of crimes so swiftly and with such remarkable efficiency without an active support and connivance of the police-administration establishment. That the police-administration nexus acted that morning with prior approval of the Chief Minister, has been admitted by the Home Secretary himself. But can the Chief Minister take such a major decision alone, all by himself? It is common knowledge that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya regularly visits the Part Headquarters at Alimuddin Street to receive instructions about his programmes and actions, what to do where. It is also common knowledge by now what Biman Bose, Binoy Kongar and Lakshaman Seth have said and done, when and where. But what about Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri? Haven’t they done anything to perpetuate this from their Gopalan Bhawan office in Delhi? Can they escape the responsibility altogether? Indeed, in order to identify the culprits behind this massive crime nothing less than a most thorough investigation will do.
Of course the responsibility of the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is already established. He has admitted his ‘moral’ responsibility in a public meeting by striking his forehead thrice and confirming, ‘The responsibility is mine, mine, mine’. That’s true indeed. According to eye-witnesses at Khejuri, each packed police van was followed by at least one empty truck; it was these trucks that smuggled the corpses. Certainly the onus falls on Buddhadeb Bhattachrya who happens to hold both the portfolios—the Chief Minister as well As the Police Minister. Therefore his trial is the first imperative.
But, we know, no proper investigation will be done, nor will justice be delivered. It is not just because a CPIM-controlled puppet government rules at Delhi at the moment. The real reason is that we the common public of West Bengal have allowed , (especially) since the reign of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, to become dehumanized. Party leaders are supposed to be public servants. Instead they have emerged as our controlling authority. Therefore, people convicted of grotesque murders can get remission of due punishment; they come out of jail, emerge as high-profile leaders, and set to the job of creating ‘Hell’ for the people. It has been precisely in this way, along the course of an endless chain of events – some of which I have mentioned—that the entire West Bengal has turned into Hell . In the last thirty years Hell has seeped into our bones and tissues, our head and heart. Therefore, even a genocide fails to disturb us.
Come on, let us try to envision the death of Tapasi. The CPIM government did not properly utilize the central fund for setting up ‘Nirmal Gram’( Clean village). So the farmers of Singur, which is so close to Kolkata, do not have toilets inside the house; and girls like Tapasi have to go to the field before the break of dawn to have her morning toilet over. That day too the girl of seventeen went to the field, which had been their field till the other day when the ‘compassionate’ Chief Minister chose to take it over , and hand it over to the Tatas, a gift on the platter at the cost of the taxpayers’ money. A number of the personnel employed by Buddha to guard the land pounced upon her, gagged her, raped her one after one. Finally, these criminals, real outsiders to the place, dragged the girl across towards a burning pit. Tapasi felt the heat was rising, more, even more, when they popped up the body by the legs , held upside down, and forced the head into the pit.
Imagine, please do imagine, come, let us all sit together to imagine how that helpless innocent girl felt thus being burnt alive till the last breath.
Who doesn’t know that this envisioned scene is only too close to life! Yet we could not scream out in one voice, ‘We must have real inquiry into Tapasi’s death! We must!’ Similarly , if we allow ourselves to get reconciled to the even more horrifying deaths of Nandigram then it will be sending the unmistakable message that life can be completely thrown into Hell in West Bengal; because, we the common public here have lost the last dreg of human sympathy. Like the beasts , until we ourselves are made to suffer we do not feel the torment of suffering. We have turned into beasts in human form. So it is in the fitness of things that we should have beasts for our leaders. The trend of contemporary Bengali society is to turn into beasts. So the first day of the coming year is going to be sadder than ever.
[English version of the Bengali article in Dainik Statesman. 15 April 2007;
Translation: Rama Kundu]
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